We are just getting back from the FIATECH conference and it I had to sum it up in two words it would be: Interoperability and ISO 15926. It was great to see the excitement and the vigor surrounding several efforts ongoing within the industry. FIATECH does a great job of bringing the thought leaders within the industry together to address technology and process as it relates to capital projects.
Highlighted in several of the presentations was a 2004 paper by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that conservatively estimates the "cost of inadequate interoperability in the U.S. captital facilities industry to be $15.8 billion per year." This is a staggering number by any means. The two most prevalent ongoing efforts trying to address this issue is ISO 15926 and BIM.
Most would argue that pdf is the "de facto" standard for document and information exchange within the industry. (By the way we did release the full specification for ISO standardization...) If you just look at part of the title of ISO 15926 it is the "integration of life-cycle data" with the key word being DATA. This brings up the question, where does Adobe fit into all of this if it is about the data?
I think most would agree that they view PDF as document centric versus data centric, which is a fair valid argument. What most people do not know is that the data within that document is easily interchangeable between applications and databases! So what exactly does this mean? Think of PDF as the presentation format. The data will be presented in PDF and anyone with the Free Adobe Reader or Acrobat can consume that data. With PDF being an open format, data can be accessed via the API's. Also, what most people don't know is that we offer an enterprise solution called LiveCycle that can reuse the data from the PDF and link it to other applications and databases as well as pull information from those applications and databases to be displayed in PDF!
So to answer the question most of you are asking us or have yet to ask, yes we are developing technology to meet these initiatives. We strongly feel that PDF wiill remain and continue to be one of the most prevelant standards in the industry. As the standards and initiatives become well defined, we will strive to put the technology in place to meet the customer's needs. As the industry moves towards a data centric model, just think of PDF as your presentation format.
Other ISO information surrounding PDF:
PDF/A - Archival
PDF/E - Reliable exchange of engineering documentation
PDF/X - Facilitate the exchange of print ready documents
PDF
Have fun,
Jonathan